MM Hunter Guide (4.3)

Everyone is open to contribute to this thread, if you have some information / numbers that are valid and/or other information, feel free to post and I will see to it that the thread is updated.

Note: This is a gathering of info from various sites + some of my personal opinions. I do not take credit for everything in this guide. This guide is posted to give a overview of the basics, if you wish to go deeper into the World of Theorycrafting, follow my links.

In this guide I will gather information found across several sources, and put them in a clean and easy way for the reader to comprehend and understand the material. This guide is meant for PvE purposes only, and should not be followed for PvP or Solo / Dungeons. Most of the DPS comparisons in this thread was done in a 378 T12 set using Femaledwarf.

1.2 Abbreviations / Acronyms

Props to Whitefyst of Elitistjerks for this table.

2.0 Your Character

2.1 Talents

Mists of Pandaria changed the talent system completely (I assume you've noticed this by now), therefore there aren't really that many different options to go from.

Barrage would beat Glaive Shot in AoE heavy fights as Barrage can proc quite a few Wild Quivers.

2.2 Glyphs

Glyph of Marked for Death
Glyph of Deterrence
Glyph of Animal Bond

Those glyphs are the main three glyphs you'll want for raiding. Marked for Death means you don't need to reapply Hunter's mark for the longer fights, Deterrence gives more damage reduction for abilities and effects that it wont protect you from, and the Animal Bond gives you more healing, which is always nice.

Glyph of Aimed Shot can be a nice glyph for fights involving a lot of moment, or if you're like me, you like to jump around while DPSing.

As for minor glyphs, the only one I recommend having is Revive Pet. The rest is situational and personal preference. Glyph of Direction currently makes your Misdirection have no cooldown, which makes it a really nice glyph. You can use it on a tank constantly. This will probably be fixed soon.

2.3 Race

Whitefyst has done an excellent job looking at the DPS difference of races in Mists of Pandaria. The modeling was done as an Orc, so the values are how much less/more dps you'd do as a different race. Note that this modeling is for T14H gear.
Note that Femaledwarf averages out Blood Fury (Orc racial), meaning it might not be accurate - Orc might the better than Troll. The difference is minimal either way.

Race

DPS/Difference

% Difference

Troll

+93

+0.1%

Orc

104567

0%

Pandaren

-7

-0%

Worgen

-225

-0.2%

Forsaken

-304

-0.3%

Goblins

-581

-0.6%

Draenei

-642

-0.6%

Dwarf

-899

-0.9%

Blood Elf

-988

-0.9%

Night Elf

-1032

-1.0%

Human

-1049

-1.0%

Tauren

-1062

-1.0%

Gnome

Not applicable

2.4 Professions

Most of the main professions grants a 320 agility boosts which makes them roughly equal. It's not worth mentioning all the professions. Take whichever you could benefit most from in terms of crafted gear/reagents and whatnot.

Herbalism is actually a very strong profession now if you use Lifeblood correctly. It can be a significant DPS boost (2880 haste for 20 sec every 2 min), and with the extra focus regen it also grants, it can be a very strong DPS cooldown.)

Macro for Rapid Fire, Racial, Potion of the Tol'vir, and pet Ability#showtooltip Rapid Fire
/cast Call of the Wild (Ferocity pet)
/cast Roar of Recovery (Cunning pet, might not want to use this with Rapid Fire.)
/cast Blood Fury (Replace with your own racial)
/cast Rapid Fire
/use Potion of the Tol'vir

Macro to Misdirect your Focus, if you have no focus, it will misdirect your pet instead.#showtooltip
/cast [@focus,exists] Misdirection;[@pet,exists] Misdirection

Usefull macro: /castsequence !Aspect of the Hawk, !Aspect of the Fox
This will make you cast hawk first time you press the button, fox second. I've bound it to mousewheel down so I can click it while on the move easily, to switch between the aspects as needs be.

#showtooltip Deterrence
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast deterrence
This macro will make you stop casting your current cobra/steady/aimed shot (can't activate deterrence in the middle of a cast, so if you're in fox, you might get pwnt by whatever is flying your way before it finishes). It will also cancel any current deterrence up (first thing happening). After canceling, if you have deterrence off cooldown, it'll use deterrence.
Basically, this is another button that pops deterrence first click, takes it off second (no need to waste 4 seconds of dps time if you dodged the big hit in the first second of it, is there?). Along with that, the stopcasting line is really useful on fights like heroic rag, where you go into fox to dodge engulfings, if you happen to find yourself caught and can't get out in time.

3.0 Gear

3.1 Stats

Agility is obviously the best stat for Hunters. Ranged DPS will always be better, meaning a higher itemlevel weapon will usually always be an upgrade.
The stat priority is as follows: Agility > Hit to cap (961) > Crit > Haste > Mastery >> Stamina

3.1.1 Hit rating

120.109 hit rating = 1% hit, and we need 961 (841 if Draenei), or 8% hit, to hit cap our yellow shots. This is an easy cap to reach through reforging, and shouldn't be gemmed for unless the socket bonus makes it worthwhile.

Note that a boss can block your ranged attacks, so it's usually a good idea to try to stand behind the boss, or at least not in front of him.

3.1.2 Crit rating

179.28 crit rating = 1% crit, and Crit is our most important stats, at least as of now. It's discussed that with BiS gear, haste becomes the best, but that will probably require more testing.
During the Careful Aim phase of the boss, your Steady Shot and Aimed Shot recieves a 60% boost to Crit Chance. Then, you're basically hit a cap of 40.6% Crit with those two spells. You should not try to stay at this crit chance though, crit is still good beyond this "Soft Cap".

3.1.3 Haste rating

128.057 haste rating = 1% haste, our second most important secondary stat. Haste is a bit tricky when it comes to MM, as there are certain "plateaus" where you can squeeze in an extra shot in your rotation. This will be covered further down in the guide.

3.1.4 Mastery rating

Mastery is our least favored secondary stat, at least until you've reached a haste plateau and don't really want more haste after that, if you're one of those. Wild Quiver is pretty awesome when it comes to AoE, as each shot of your multishot has a chance to proc it.

179.28 mastery rating adds a 2.1% chance to proc Wild Quiver.

3.2 Reforging

With reforging you can change 40% of one of the secondary stat on your gear. This means we're able to more easily control the secondary stats on our gear, and change them accordingly to our Stat weights.

It is preferred to reforge your Mastery Rating to reach the hit cap of 961 hit rating fist. If you are above the cap, you should reforge Hit to Crit where possible, otherwise Haste, or lastly Mastery. You should never really reforge out of Crit.

A good reforging tool is http://wowreforge.com/ input your own stat weights and you can easily see how to exactly hit the 961 hit rating cap through reforging. You can also make it show you how to reforge while having exactly 1300 haste, or similar.

You should gem +50 agility in ANY SOCKET, unless there is a +20 agility bonus. If you have a leg item with a red and yellow gem, with a +20 agility socket bonus, you should gem a +50 agility and a +25 Agility +25 Crit rating gem. If a blue gem, fill it with a +25 agility +25 hit rating gem.

You should really never gem anything else, as you do not want to waste gems with secondary stats instead of gems with your main stat, Agility. Never use +40 hit rating gems or similar, reforge to get your hit cap up.

The value of haste plateaus has declined. It's my recommendation that you ignore them, and dont gear towards specific haste plateaus. Instead, I recommend that you simply reforge with Crit being the priority, and try to get your haste level as high as you can, at the expense of mastery or exessive hit. Try to never reforge Crit to Haste.

I strongly, strongly recommend that you use the Aimed Shot dump method in T13 content. Most of the movement on the different boss fights can be very predictable, meaning you should know when to Aimed Shot safely, and when you should switch to Arcane Shot.

If you still feel haste plateaus are the way to go for you, Elitistjerks recommends any haste level between the old 12.93% and up to 26.48%. It all depends on your situation.

5.0 Rotation / Priority system

Hunters has a few different "phases" for their DPS rotation. The "Careful Aim phase", The "normal phase", the "Termination phase", and the "Kill Shot phase".

Careful Aim Phase
This phase is when the health of your target is at 100>90% health. This is where you want to make sure you pre-pot if possible, and you blow 2 Rapid Fire, while dumping focus with Aimed Shot. With the 2cp T13 bonus you should in general be able to maintain a 2 SS > Aimed > SS > Aimed > SS Aimed > SS Aimed, "rotation" going. Just remember to keep Improved Steady Shot up.

Use Readiness after the first Rapid Fire has ended.

Normal Phase
This is basically the phase from 90>25% health, which consists of your normal priority system. To be quite honest there isn't a rotation for Hunters. You just work based on a priority system, which consists of:
Ensuring ISS is up > Keeping Chimera Shot on cooldown > Keeping SrS up > MMM AI procs > Dumping focus with Aimed/Arcane > Steady Shot for focus.

Using the Aimed Shot build you should get off as many Aimed Shots as you can, while of course using Steady Shot in pairs when ISS has 3-4 sec left on it's duration. You should also use Chimera Shot as soon as possible, since it's quite focus effective - but it's not dangerous to extend it by some seconds. You should try to use Arcane Shot whenever your 4cp T13 bonus is off the ICD (110 seconds or so), to ensure a high uptime of the haste buffs, which is quite amazing.

Using the Arcane Shot build, you can in theory use a SS > SS > AS > AS > AS > SS > SS > CS cycle, however you would most likely end up focus capped with the T13 2cp bonus, specially during the Termination phase. You should, however, ALWAYS dump with Aimed Shot whenever you are under a haste effect such as Rapid Fire, Bloodlust, or the T13 4cp bonus.

Termination Phase
This is when the boss is at 25>0% health. This makes your Steady Shot generate more focus, isn't it amazing, more focus! Anyway, not much changes here as you are getting a LOT of focus already with the 2cp T13 bonus. Dump more focus.

Kill Shot Phase
Kill shot is a focus free shot, and should be used on Cooldown. You will most likely end up focus capped here, not much can help that.

Now that all pets do more or less the same DPS, you should chose your pet based on your raid composition. If your raid is lacking 5% crit, you should go with a Wolf pet, as it grants the raid 5% crit, and so on.

If all buffs are filled, it's a matter of preference. I quote this from Elitistjerks:

Even if a Cunning pet and a Ferocity pet provide you with the exact same DPS, there are still choices to make. The Cunning pet does more of the overall DPS while the hunter does with a Ferocity pet. Thus, if its a fight with high hunter DPS uptime and lower pet attack uptime, a Ferocity pet choice will be better. Conversely, if the fight has high pet attack uptime but low hunter DPS uptime, the Cunning pet is better, especially since it relies less on its focus regen from the hunter who is doing less attacks to regen its focus.

Contrary to popular belief, the Sporebat is not really the best pet for DPS.

7.0 Set bonuses

T11 Set bonuses

The 2cp gives you +5% Crit on SrS. This is a very, very weak bonus for MM, worth around 18 DPS in Normal T11 gear, and 19.9 DPS in Heroic Tier11 gear. This bonus is better for Survival due to their SrS spread on Multi Shot, and 100% bonus dmg on SrS tick crits.

The 4cp gives you 0.2 sec faster Steady / Cobra Shot cast times. The 4cp is determined to be worth around 550-600 DPS.

T12 Set bonuses

The 2-set bonus is that SS casts have a 10% chance to trigger a Flaming Arrow (FA), doing 80% of weapon damage as a fire damage. This is around a 400 DPS increase, with full raid buffs. If you have 8% spell damage debuff on the buss, the bonus will deal 94% (1.80 * 1.08 = 1.94400) damage, instead of just 80%.

The 4-set bonus is that autoshots have a 10% chance to cause our next shot or Kill Command to cost not focus. There is such overwhelming amount of Theorycrafting about this set bonus, I will have to redirect to you this post. It is determined to give from 300-600 DPS increase, if played right.

T13 Set bonuses

The 2-set bonus grants your Steady / Cobra twice the amount of focus. This bonus is quite good, and you should drop T12 4cp for it, even if you're going from 391 ilvl to 384 Raid Finder version (The T13 armor has more gem slots, which makes you get more agility by actually downgrading in ilevel). You want this bonus.

The 4-set bonus makes your Arcane Shot grant you and your pet 30% haste for 15 seconds. You definitively want this bonus. It's quite awesome for the Aimed Shot dumping method, as long as you remember to use Arcane Shot when the ICD is off. The proc chance is about 40% and the ICD is around 100 to 110 seconds.

8.0 Mods / Tools

WarcraftHuntersUnion is a great site for all Hunters, with tons of guides. Go there. But come back here on MMO Champion to post stuff!Petopia, all you need to know about pets, and then some more.Femaledwarf, great simulator for Hunter DPS and stuff.wowreforge, I use this site to change my reforging then import it to Femaledwarf. Make sure you edit the stat weights though, they might be off.

While its been quite a while since I've dpsed on hunter, in patch 4.1 I believe aimed shot was a better focus dump with ISS up than arcane shot. Whats changed since then to bring arcane shot back into the picture?

Last edited by Carni; 2011-08-24 at 05:53 PM.
Reason: Terrible use of the English language

AI was nerfed, i think before 4.1 even. It is a better dump if you can stand still enough to cast it, but it's so close to dumping AS' that in most cases it's not worth it outside of dynamic haste effects or RF.

If I may, please include that using Haste or Mastery as your secondary stat after crit, and getting to haste plateaus beyond the first one is a very low change in dps, therefore making it more of a personal choice than anything.

While its been quite a while since I've dpsed on hunter but in patch 4.1 I believe aimed shot was a better focus filling with ISS than arcane shot. Whats changed since then to bring arcane shot back into the picture?

Arcane shot is better atm because of gear scaling and the fact that most of the time you will be moving so AiS can't be hardcast. I used to prefer AiS hardcasting, but now Arcane Shot dumping is just much more reliable damage.

Violence is like duct tape, if it doesn't work the first time, use more.

Glyph of Serpent Sting as a good third option for MM? Ouch. 50-ish DPS is not a good option, SV we are not.

I listed the options for the third slot that was a dps increase.

As for hardcasting Aimed vs Arcane Shot, Hardcasting Aimed is better at Best in Slot gear levels. Arcane Shot for focus dump has gives a 40301.64 DPS in the sim tools, while hardcasting aimed gives a 40909.84 DPS. It's hardly a difference. I'll update the thread later to reflect this.

Also, hardcasting aimed has one flaw, if you cancel one aimed cause you have to move, it's a huge DPS loss. Which is why Arcane Shot as focus dump is preferred.

You should really remove the Serpent Sting Glyph from the Prime Glyph choices. It is never a good option.

It could be worth it to mention that while Femaledwarf sims Arcane Shot dump to be higher, the Femaledwarf settings are very biased towards Arcane shot. In a real raid environment Aimed Shot pulls ahead by a much larger margin, assuming you can stand still and cast it. Nearly every fight currently has more than enough stand still to warrant Aimed Shot focus dump, Alysrazor being the only exception to this. Every other fight has Phases of high movement, and then phases of low movement. Any good hunter will swap between to two to maximize their DPS.

In your reforging section you could also mention that reforging is Encounter Specific just like your spec should be. Fights like H Rhyo/Beth (If your on ling duty) highly favor Mastery stacking over Haste. On most other fights Haste pulls out ahead of course. Heroic Rag is the one encounter where you can spec both are do well, depending on your raid setup and how you do the fight. If you do Paragons strat of Stack + AoE down, if your AoE doesn't quite seem enough it's beneficial to respec to mastery. Likewise if you're AoE is very strong, you could see a larger Single Target increase by reforging out of mastery and into more Haste.

All in all great guide, it's nice to see someone step it up and make one for 4.2.

Copy/pasted your misdirect macro and my character will /say "/cast [@focus,exists]...etc." Doesn't cast the spell, there a typo in it?

Nah, it works fine for me. You sure you didn't accidentally delete parts of it?

As for the poster above, I removed the Serpent Sting glyph. Also, I'll add the optimal femaledwarf settings after the raid today / tomorrow to show the best settings for both Arcane Shot dump and Aimed Shot dump.

Few kinks and errors:
"3.1.3 hast rating" should be haste (forgot an E).
The only way to maintain a positive focus rotation, unless you don't actually NEED to read this guide and have read every single EJ post on the topic, would be 1235 haste + haste to account for latency, WITHOUT the Chim glyph. It's just not possible with the chim glyph without delaying the shot too much. Math behind it can be found on EJ (really can't be bothered to sit and write in a timetable), but what you're aiming to do with 1235 haste, is lower your steady shot cast time to 1.40 seconds per.
This means that you'd use a 5-2-chim cycle. 5 Steady shots (7 seconds), 2 Instants (2 seconds), 1 Chim shot (1 second), totalling the cycle of 10 seconds between chim shot.
Now, granted, you do usually lose about 20% of the chim glyphs usefullness because you end up chaught in the last of a GBC before you can fire it, human error and all. But it's still too big a push to use it - even with 4 set, you were aiming for 1.25 seconds, giving you a 9.25 sec cycle. As for this rotation, due to MMM you'd occasionally end up with focus enough to do a 4-3-chim cycle, replacing a steady shot with an instant. With the 4 set bonus from T12, this happens about 60-70% of the time, even if you only spend the proc on an arcane shot.
As for glyphs - this is a guide for the starting, basic hunter. You want to include Arcane as "must have", not just "recommended", as anyone new to a hunter will inevitably interrupt their aimed shots, making it the lesser option for focus dumping. As for the third glyph, the one reliably giving more dps is Rapid Fire - Kill shot could be "usefull" on burn-bosses, but with 2/2 termination, you'd be swimming in so much focus that you simply cannot spend it all if youre spending 2 gbc's every 10 seconds on free shots (if you want to keep ISS buff up, that is).

Usefull macro: /castsequence !Aspect of the Hawk, !Aspect of the Fox
This will make you cast hawk first time you press the button, fox second. I've bound it to mousewheel down so I can click it while on the move easily, to switch between the aspects as needs be.

#showtooltip Deterrence
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cast deterrence
This macro will make you -
Stop casting your current cobra/steady/aimed shot (can't activate deterrence in the middle of a cast, so if youre in fox, you might get pwnt by whatever is flying your way before it finishes)
Cancel any current deterrence up (first thing happening).
After cancelling, if you have deterrence off cooldown, it'll use deterrence.
Basicly, this is another button that pops deterrence first click, takes it off second (no need to waste 4 seconds of dps time if you dodged the big hit in the first second of it, is there?). Along with that, the stopcasting line is really usefull on fights like heroic rag, where you go into fox to dodge engulfings, if you happen to find yourself chaught and can't get out in time.

Not sure if theres alot more to add, but will probably think of something later.